Yes, it is a good article. Stratfor likes historical and geographical imperatives, perhaps overly so. Yet the situation is clearly still evolving. Especially interesting is the Visegrad alliance, and the emerging rebellion against bail outs, which is a reaction to the western wold-wide debt crisis and perhaps the rule of the "elites". Is there an incipient Tea Party movement in the EU?

(06-28-2011 04:55 PM)jt Wrote: Is there an incipient Tea Party movement in the EU?

EU-wide movement? -- no, and I don't think this is likely.

Check on True Finns as perhaps the most interesting recent phenomenon.

As for historical analogies: the Nordic alliance is a resurrection of Swedish domination of 16-17th centuries. The Visegrad group is a resurrection of Rech Pospolita from the same days. I find it difficult to believe that either group has enough of a potential today... Nordic+UK probably is the more viable idea.

I was being somewhat sarcastic about a Tea Party movement in the EU. People who have lived under the rule of their "betters" ever since the last ice age are unlikely to have much spunk. However, there does seem to be some restiveness in Germany and Finland about bailouts.

Quote:That is because the real crisis is the more fundamental question of how the European continent is to be ruled in the 21st century.

By Germany, of course.

Quote:The current political and security architectures of Europe — the EU and NATO — were encouraged by the United States in order to unify the Continent so that it could present a somewhat united front against the Soviet Union. They did not grow organically out of the Continent.

The author forgets that there is no columns of soldiers walking across Europe anymore. And fluvial transportation makes only a tiny portion of freight handling. Today there are so many tunels under the Alps poeple forget there are mountains.
Comparing the EU with the US of the 18~19 Century is interresting... only if you want to learn more about history of North America. Not the other way.
It's internet age here, be real.

The Security Threat is a big word without much concrete content. Russia is not a threat to Europe since the 90's. East european countries don't feel so, but that's normal pre-emptive reaction: No nations should stay totaly defenseless, without army. And that's the case of the Baltic states. It's not like Russia is willing to re-invade them at the first occasion, but these tiny countries are virtualy without army.

The political differences over defense is real but not important at all because there is no real threat to speak of. The only one is immigration from North Africa but it's not threat of war in classical terms.

The debt crisis is by far the most important issue. Followed by... debates over agricultural subsidies!
Divides over defense policy is very very minimal.

(07-11-2011 11:50 AM)John L Wrote: However, underneath all this unity is the ever current of tribalism, even in sophisticated Euroland. It's only a matter of time before it rears it's head again, just as it did before many times.

John Ringo's book, The Last Centurian addresses tribalism, and the so-called American effect - where only in the U.S. do the neighbors support one another because of mutual benefit rather than tribalism. "Barn-raisings" are peculiarly American in nature and rarely seen outside of tribal interests in the rest of the world.

When did it do?
It's the opposite John: Europe always seemed divided on the surface because of wars and border, making different countries appearing in different colors on the map. Deeply looking into it, Europe has always had a cohesion. Europe always had trade routes, traveling noblemen, an international trade and banking system way ahead of other continents, a pan european culture...
The crusades was an common enterprise of the actual EU countries, heirs to the thrones would marry princesses from all over Europe (a french king married an Ukrainian princess in the 9th century) In the 18th C you would find french and italian musicians, architect and philosopher at the court of St Petersburg. French, Latin and English were known languages all of Europe. Napoleon and his contemporaries didn't know the concept of border.
The big divide became in the ww1 and ww2. It was temporary: twice 4 years. Many death but before, between and after Europe was culturaly united.

(07-11-2011 01:51 PM)Fredledingue Wrote: When did it do?
It's the opposite John: Europe always seemed divided on the surface because of wars and border, making different countries appearing in different colors on the map. Deeply looking into it, Europe has always had a cohesion. Europe always had trade routes, traveling noblemen, an international trade and banking system way ahead of other continents, a pan european culture...
The crusades was an common enterprise of the actual EU countries, heirs to the thrones would marry princesses from all over Europe (a french king married an Ukrainian princess in the 9th century) In the 18th C you would find french and italian musicians, architect and philosopher at the court of St Petersburg. French, Latin and English were known languages all of Europe. Napoleon and his contemporaries didn't know the concept of border.
The big divide became in the ww1 and ww2. It was temporary: twice 4 years. Many death but before, between and after Europe was culturaly united.

Come on Fred, wars and border disputes are just surface effects? You're kidding, right? Sounds like a lot deeper to me.

In fact Europe was, for centuries, united through the high aristocracy, royal and ducal families which were above nations. It was an international ruling class. Poeple who didn't identified with the population living on the land they owned (but it was commonly apreciated that they learn local language, local customs and tell that they love these poeple).
Pan-Europeanism such as in Germanic Roman Empire, the Napoleonian Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and so on, was always the underlining ideal. No tribalism, no localist nationalism, no short-sightism.
This unity started to crack with Garibaldi, the nationalist Italian leader, non-dynastic republics (Gambetta in France), socialism, modern politics, the power of industry overtaking the power of the prestige of the aristocratic lineage and land ownership, and finaly ww1 and ww2 which was like a final deadly knife cut in the heart.

The main difference between Europe and the US is that the US never had a pan-continental aristocracy. Our aristocracy was all but tribalist. tribalism is the close tie between leadership and a small part of the population being priviledged on a village scale basis. These poeple were not poeple from village or even regions. They moved around Europe all the time, being one year in Spain, next year in England, next year in Prussia.

Some historians have described World Wars I and II as European tribal wars. The USA does not have any states that are essentially ethnic, and what limited ethnic communities we have are intermixed, usually within cities. Plus there is one universal language uniting all the states. Even religions are intermixed. I wonder if the same toleration would continue to prevail if the dominant majority in the USA were no longer White Anglo-Saxon Protestants.

jt Wrote:It is quite evident today that there is an elite class in the US that thinks they are the aristocracy

Today yes. Definetly there is an aristocratic class in the US, which is also an international one. I xas talking about it in the economic section when discussing bank CEOs'bonuses. But this is a recent evolution compared to the 1000 years old european aristocracy which political power ended gradualy between Napoleon III (1870) and Hitler (1945).

Ron Wrote:Some historians have described World Wars I and II as European tribal wars.

So do I link the american Civil War to a tribal clash too. Get real...

Ron Wrote:The USA does not have any states that are essentially ethnic,

Nor did Europe. Europe did/does have ethnic regions, but these ethnic region never fought any war against each other. War in Europe have always been fought by coalition of countries against another coalized block regardless of ethnic groups. France is not an ethnic group (not today and not in the past), Germany is an ethnic puzzle, the UK, Italy, Spain... LOL, can't be more divided ethnicaly. Every european nation has at leat 3 ethnic groups each.
Yet none of these ethnic group have been present as ethnicities in the big wars. Not a single time since the final christianisation of western Europe in the 6th century.
In fact tribalism ended with christianisation. Europe adopted a single religion, therefore a single language (latin) and a single political structure (feodalism). This evolved with french becoming the single language and the international aristocratic elite being the single ruling class from Lisbone to Moscow. Before J.M. Baroso (the President of the European Commission and the most powerful man downhere) we had Catherine de Medicis. Try to put an ethnic tag on these two. Good luck.
In 1812, you had french who were colonel and general in the Russian army fighting Napoleon. How's that ethnical?
With some strech you can say that Hitler tried to put some tribalistic tone in his propaganda. Well, he lost. Because he tried to create an aryian class or tribe if you want, out of the blue without any real base to make it sustainable. He had to invent the notion of race to achieve that and this is different from tribalism already.
I don't know a single instance of war in recent or past history which was ethnicaly based. You have to go back to the time of the Wisigoth, the Burgondes and the Vandals to find one...